Alfonso Cuarón, writer-director-producer of the anticipated Netflix film Roma, got a laugh from the Contenders audience Saturday at the DGA Theater when moderator Joe Utichi asked him about “discovering” Yalitza Aparicio, an aspiring teacher who appeared in the film in her first screen role.
“I didn’t find her — she was always there,” Cuarón said. “You were lost? I was very lucky to meet with her.”
He added he remains mystified by Hollywood’s frequent declaration that it has “discovered” new talent. “It’s like Europeans [who] find America,” he joked.
All kidding aside, Cuarón, the first Mexico-born filmmaker to win the directing Oscar, for sci-fi opus Gravity in 2014, said it was self-discovery that led him to create an intimate, black-and-white movie about his memories of growing up in Mexico City.
“It was an attempt to come to terms and to try to understand what existence is,“ said Cuarón, who was joined on the panel by Aparicio, actor Marina de Tavira and producer Gabriela Rodriguez. “I have said before that I think [the reason] was age, in the sense that there is a point at which you want to understand who you are in terms of who you were, from the standpoint of yourself, your family, but also the society where you grew up.”
First-time producer Rodriguez said of Cuarón: “He gives me always a headache every day, but it’s worth it. … I am really honored that he gives me headaches and tortures me.”
One potential headache for producer and actors was that Cuarón did not share the script and insisted on shooting in sequence. Despite frustrations, de Tavira called the choice an “incredible blessing. … It really helped us as actors and as characters to immerse ourselves in a real-life experience.”
Aparicio said that ignorance can be bliss when it comes to acting. “At first I thought this was the way every director worked,” she said through a translator. “In our own lives, we don’t have a script.”
Photo: Simon Schluter
The one show that made me the happiest for the longest was the Oxfam Gala [at the Melbourne Comedy International Festival] last year. I did a really stupid thing where I climbed over the audience and spoke into a woman’s hair, and it was all for a pun, and everyone really seemed to like it. When I was climbing over everybody, I was shouting that I needed to find my secret stash. I found a box under an audience member’s chair and then took it back up on stage and opened the box and there was a moustache inside and that was the secret ‘stache. It was the most fun I ever had and it was on the telly, which meant my dad was proud. My dad doesn’t really get what I do, but he’s really proud. He ordered a T-shirt that says “Demi’s dad” for when he comes to my live shows. And I record his voice for some of my sets, like fake phone conversations with him, so I love him being involved. It was the best gig because it was the biggest, it was for TV and a good cause. I was buzzing for two weeks. Demi Lardner is at the Factory Theatre, Marrickville, from May 16-20.
Very early on in my career I did a gig with some comedian friends for the Rovers, who are Scouts when they turn 18. At this point I’d only been doing stand-up for six or eight months, so I barely had five minutes of material. But I was excited, this could have been the biggest gig of my life. But for some reason they just hated us from the get-go. They were booing and yelling. Most of my friends who I was performing with stayed on stage, but I decided, “Screw these guys”, and I took the mic and went to their level and kept doing the gig. At one point, someone threw a beer can at me. I caught it, and there was a little bit of beer left, so I drank that, and then I was like, “At least give me a full beer”. But the thing that always alarms me, when I look back at that show, is that I was watching my two friends get booed and I had the option of pulling out, but in my head I’m like, “Well, I’m here already, so I might as well just do this. I’ve driven an hour and a half. I’m going to do my five minutes”. I reckon you’ve got to do every possible gig you can, because that experience taught me that I was able to hold my own in front of 300 people in an outdoor, yelly gig. I don’t know why the Rovers were so mean. Aren’t they meant to be nice people and get badges? I didn’t know there were badges for being arseholes. Dilruk Jayasinha is at Giant Dwarf, Redfern, on May 11-12.
Longreach council were putting together a comedy show to create a bit of culture and booked me and Luke Heggie. So we flew there, and the council guy who picks us up, looks at us and says, “Oh, I tried get someone good like Wil Anderson.” He took us to the venue and it was just this big shed, and there was three locals there and one looked like he was dead, he just had flies in his mouth. It was crazy. Then we had to go to our accommodation, but the pub had been vacated because the family had been accused of dealing meth and it was all locked up. And some guy pulled up and said, “Yeah, the Clancys skipped town a week ago”. For the gigs, we travelled around doing the remote pubs, but they just didn’t care. You’d hear the pokies over every word you said. It was really hard. Heggie had some hope, because he had some relatable stuff about kids, but at that point I was talking about sex and dating and they’re like, “We don’t date here. We meet someone and we marry them.” They were lovely people, but very country Australia. It was a real wake-up call to me. I think that’s a cool thing about comedy, you get to connect with people you might not. I like doing gigs at RSLs and thinking, “You guys aren’t going to like me” and they do, and it’s nice. But I did not have those skills at the time, and it was quite awful. Years ago, I would take it very personally, but now I’m pretty good at shaking them off. I always think if people have fun at the show that’s great, and if they don’t like me, now they’ve got something to talk about. If a couple who have run out of conversation come to my show and hate me, they can have a bloody great time talking about how much they hate me on the car ride home. I’ve given you a gift! Becky Lucas is at the Factory Theatre, Marrickville, May 16-20.
I was doing a satirical comedy thing and they had a Kickstarter fund, and one of the rewards for a large donation was a private show by some of the contributors. So we ended up in this fancy butcher shop in Woollahra – one of those places where it’s all marble and sausages on stones – and they had a conveyor belt of hooks, with carcasses rotating, and you’d see them in the periphery of your vision, swinging away, while you were standing in front of them. And four of the five of us were vegetarians. The gig was a surprise for a man’s birthday, so it was 16 people, eating steaks and staring at us, while the lady that hired us, was heckling us. It went out the other side of badness into this joyous, terrible thing. And I remember thinking, “This is now my benchmark. Nothing can scare me any more after this.” It felt like an anxiety dream. The partygoers were very nice in a very confused way. They were just coming to a friend’s intimate birthday party at this fancy butchers, and then all of a sudden five awkward satirists start doing political comedy at them. It was astonishing.
